Celbridge (; , historically anglicised Kildrought) is a town and townland on the River Liffey in County Kildare, Ireland. It is west of Dublin. Both a local centre and a commuter town within the Greater Dublin Area, it is located at the intersection of the R403 and R405 regional roads. As of the 2022 census, Celbridge was the third largest town in County Kildare by population, with 20,601 residents.
The origins of Celbridge can be traced to a 7th-century ecclesiastical settlement founded by St Mochua, known as Cill Droichid ("church of the bridge"), being anglicised to Celbridge after 1714. The present town developed around this ecclesiastical settlement, with significant expansion occurring from the 18th century.
Etymology The name Celbridge is derived from the Irish Cill Droichid meaning "Church of bridge" or "Church by the bridge". The Irish name was historically anglicised as Kildroicht, Kildrought, Kildroght, Kildrout ().
History Origins There is evidence of 5,000 years of habitation, as evidenced by beads and quern stones in the National Museum from Griffinrath (), and the nearby high ground sloping down to the Liffey. Research has linked Celbridge with the Slí Mór possibly crossing the Liffey at a ford located below the site of the mill directly east of the bridge rather than at Castletown House, as previously thought.
The etymology of Donaghcumper Church (church of the confluence, "Domhnach" is one of the earliest Irish words for church) (.) suggests it may have existed as a monastic site from the 5th century.
Folklore and heroic literature associate the north bank of Celbridge with both Saint Patrick (hill and church of uncertain antiquity in Ardrass) (.) and Saint Mochua (c.570), who was associated with a church in Tea Lane (.), and a well on the site of the current mill where pagan converts were baptised.
Parish of Kildrought The original Kildrought parish church (built 14th century, burned 1798) stood in the present graveyard at Tea Lane and houses the mausoleums of the Dongan and Conolly families. It was granted by the Normans to the Abbey of St Thomas in Dublin. Donaghcumper Church (c1150) had windows of cut stone inserted into the building in the 14th century. Its ruins are extant in the main graveyard in Celbridge, and members of the Alan family are buried in the church vault.
The old parish of Donaghcumper consisted of the modern townlands of Parsonstown, Rinnawad, Ballyoulster, Commons, Coneyboro, Coolfitch, Donaghcumper, Elm Hall, Loughlinstown, Newtown, Reeves, Simmonstown, Straleek and St. Wolstans. Pre Norman churches served the adjoining parishes in Donaghcumper (.) and Stacumny (.) (mentioned 1176, burned 1297, held in 1308 by a parson, Waleys) to the east, Adherrig or Aderrig further to the east (Athdearg or Red Ford, church first mentioned 1220) (.), Kilmacreddock (.) to the north east, the tiny parish of Donaghmore (plundered 1150, mentioned in letter 1190) further to the north (.), Laraghbryan (plundered 1036 and 1171) (.) to the north west, and Killadoon (.) to the south.
The modern Catholic parish of Celbridge and Straffan comprises the medieval parishes of Kildrought and Straffan, as well as the former parishes of Stacumny, Donaghcumper, Killadoon, Castledillon and Kilmacredock. The parish of Stacumny (Teach Cumni) originally included the townlands of Ballymadeer, Balscott and Stacumny. Killadoon from Cill an Dún may get its name from the earthen mound that still stands by the gate leading into the grounds surrounding Killadoon House. On the left-hand side of the avenue, as you enter through the gate, there is an overgrown churchyard with some headstones. Killadoon parish embraced the present townlands of Ardrass, Ballymakeally, Crippaun, Killadoon, Killenlea and Posseckstown. Kilmacredock is the smallest of the medieval parishes. A roofless ruin is all that remains of the original church. It is named for Redoc, who had a son who established a religious foundation southwest of the present town of Leixlip. Bellingham family members were buried in a vault in the floor of the building, but their remains were removed in the mid-20th century.
Town of Kildrought The town of Kildrought or Kildroighid developed around the castle, monastery and mill of Kildrought which Thomas de Hereford, the Norman Lord of Kildrought erected early in the 13th century. The one long street running between the de Hereford Castle and lands of Castletown, and the mill, had taken shape by 1314 when Henry le Waleys was charged at a Naas court of "breaking the doors" of houses in the town of Kildrought and by night "taking geese, hens, beer and other victuals" against the will of the people of the town.
By the time of the Down Survey (1654–1656) the population was 102 and the Dongan family were in possession of all the land in Celbridge. Killadoon House was the home of John Dongan's brother in law Richard Talbot Earl of Tyrconnell. Dongan died at the Battle of the Boyne and is buried in Tea Lane cemetery. Talbot died immediately before the Siege of Limerick. His widow remained in Killadoon, outliving the two men who took over the town from her husband and John Dongan, Bartholmew Van Homrigh and William Conolly.
Kildrought to Celbridge The present day houses in Celbridge Main Street and town centre were built over a period of two hundred years. Celbridge Abbey was built in 1703 by a Dutch Williamite emigre, Bartholmew Van Homrigh. He was appointed Chief Commissioner for Stores in Ireland for the victorious allied forces of William III and Mary II who defeated the Jacobite alliance, and enforced the Treaty of Limerick in 1691. He moved to Kildrought Manor in 1695. When William "Speaker" Conolly purchased the rundown Castletown Estate in 1709 from Thomas Dongan, the restored Earl of Limerick and later Governor of New York, he complained that "all the Earl's tenants were beggars". Conolly built his new mansion at Castletown, cleared the existing tenantry and began to develop the town. Improvers and speculative developers followed Conolly to Celbridge. The new leases were granted on condition that the builders erect substantial stone houses with gable ends and two chimneys, replacing mud cabins and waste ground.
Existing mercantile buildings such as the 17th-century Market House, where the town's first school was based in 1709, were incorporated into the expanding mill complex of buildings near the bridge. Developers began to survey e green field sites to the north east of the bridge in the direction of Castletown House. The result was to move the axis of Celbridge away from the bridge, corn and tuck mill and road to St Mochua's church to a new Main Street.
The old Irish name Cill Droichid (Kildrought), meaning the church of the bridge, was anglicised first to Cellbridge and then, after 1724, to Celbridge. Swift in his letters to Vanessa always named the place "Kildrought", but she replied from "Celbridge".
Celbridge's 18th-century bridge had to be rebuilt after it was destroyed in a flood in December 1802.The Morning Chronicle (London, England), Friday, 10 December 1802; Issue 10471.
Later development
Six main residential and commercial areas were developed in Celbridge over a period of 250 years: Main Street (1720–1750), Tea (or Tay) Lane (1760), Maynooth Road (1790, when construction of Jasmine Lodge replaced six cabins on Main Street and eight cabins on Maynooth Road),Boylan, Lena, 'Mulligan's House, Jasmine Lodge', in Celbridge Charter, No. 59, March 1978. English Row (1805–1811), Ballyoulster (1948–1951), and St Patrick's Park (two phases 1954–1957 and 1964–1967). The historical population of the town in the 19th and 20th century period closely mirrored periods of activity and cyclical closure of the town's woollen mills, once the largest in the country.
Housing estates Celbridge was rezoned for rapid growth under the 1967 Kildare Development Plan. That year a consortium of Brian and Tony Rhattigan and the McMullan brothers, who owned the Maxol petroleum group, purchased most of the former Castletown Estate for development purposes. Planning permission was granted on appeal for a suburban housing estate along the edge of the avenue leading into Castletown House. In response Desmond Guinness personally bought the house in 1967 to save the immediate hinterland from development and established the Irish Georgian Society in the building. Permission was granted for the first development of 400 houses within the gates of Castletown in 1969 and the first phase of Castletown Estate was opened by Minister for Industry and Commerce Justin Keating on 1 October 1975. This was followed by more than 30 housing developments over the next thirty years. The 1986 census listed Celbridge (+54.9pc) as the fastest growing town in Ireland.
The population, which had been 1,514 in 1966, rose to 1,744 in 1971, 3,230 in 1979, 4,583 in 1981, 7,135 in 1986, 9,629 in 1991, 12,289 in 1996, 14,251 in 2002 and 17,262 in 2006.
A 2008 planning application by Devondale Ltd for a new €750m mixed-use development at Donaghcumper Demesne for offices, shops, restaurants, sixscreen cinema and 108 detached houses on the site, which is being promoted as "a natural extension" to Celbridge, has been criticised by local planners for being "on a city scale rather than a more acceptable town scale." The plans ultimately failed to materialise.
Historic buildings and places
Main Street The development of the Main Street commenced with the building of Kildrought House by Joseph Rotheny in 1720 for Robert Baillie, a Dublin upholsterer who was William Conolly's greatest prospect as an improving tenant. A large extension, which included a malt house, was added after Baillie sold in 1749. Kildrought house became home to John Begnall's Academy after 1782. Among the attendees were the sons of Col George Napier, George, Charles, William and Henry, later to be collectively known as "Wellington's Colonels," and their younger brother Richard Napier, and John Jebb (1775–1833), later Church of Ireland bishop of Limerick, Ardfert, and Aghadoe. Jeremiah Haughton, owner of the Mill lived there after 1818. For a time in the early 19th century, Kildrought House had a cholera hospital attached to it and served as the local police barracks from 1831 to 1841 when the barrack moved to the site of the current Michaelangelo's restaurant. After 1861 it was leased by Richard Maunsell of Oakley Park. Next door is the courthouse where the local petty sessions took place every fourth week.A History of Celbridge by Tony Doohan (Celbridge Community Council 1984) It later became home of Lloyd Christian, athletics pioneer and colleague of Michael Cusack in the hurling revival of the 1880s.